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One avenue for improving reading outcomes is to ensure children who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) enter school with the foundational skills needed to learn to read. Our research team developed an early literacy curriculum specifically for DHH children. Teachers use Foundations for Literacy (FFL) in a one-hour literacy block for the school year. Student learning objectives include improving spoken phonological awareness, alphabetic knowledge, word reading, vocabulary, and narrative. FFL is more systematic, and its instruction is more explicit, multi-modal, and intensive than might be used with children who have typical hearing. Much of the instruction is embedded in language-rich activities. Differentiation of instruction to the wide variation of language and phonological processing skills observed for children who are DHH is integral to the design. Results from multiple studies, including a randomized-control trial, indicates that FFL is an effective intervention for young DHH students.
Children who deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) and are acquiring spoken language need the same foundational skills to learn to read as children with typical hearing (TH). Researchers have found that phonological awareness, alphabetic knowledge, and vocabulary predict reading abilities in young deaf children with cochlear implants and hard-of-hearing children with hearing aids (Ambrose et al., 2012; Cupples et al., 2014; Easterbrooks et al., 2008; Lederberg et al., 2013; Nittrouer et al., 2012; Webb & Lederberg, 2014; Webb et al., 2015). These studies showed that the majority of DHH children are delayed in these skills compared to TH children, with wide individual differences. There is a strong need for intervention in the early childhood years (3-5 years old) and beginning school years (5-6 years old) that focuses on these skills. Our interdisciplinary team developed and assessed the efficacy of an early literacy curriculum for DHH prekindergarten children, called Foundations for Literacy (FFL). This paper describes our research and the curriculum used.
Background
Our team began the process of developing FFL with a systematic review of research that exists about effective early childhood education programs for TH preschoolers/ prekindergartners (National Early Literacy Panel, 2008). Primarily based on the Simple View of Reading (Gough & Tummer, 1986) and Scarborough's Reading Rope (Scarborough, 2001), effective early childhood education programs focus on improving the fundamentals for learning to read by emphasizing...